Trois-Rivières

Salut...

Nous avons voyagé 130 kilomètres hier et sommes maintenant dans la belle ville de Trois-Rivières. The french is getting used a little more often at gas stations, pubs, grocery stores, and what have you, it seems I'm a little more comfortable getting by with it than I had expected. Guess those years in elementary immersion paid off, it's strange how words will just creep back into my vocabulary slowly.

Currently we're staying in an amazing apartment with a guy named Phil, a friend of Guillaume who used to manage a pretty cool local band called The New Cities, and now works as a researcher. He also owns Borat too, which I put on last night so Adrian can finally fully appreciate the quotes I so sorely reguritate while we're on the road.

Quebec City was just amazing. After being generously hosted by Guillaume's brother Francois and his girlfriend Geneviève, who have a beautiful house in the suburb of Charlesbourg, we biked towards downtown to see old Québec. We stopped for some cheap laundry on our way and indulged in some Valentine hot dogs, which brought back memories of the same chain we'd visit around my Grandparents' cottage growing up. Delicious and cheap, not necessarily healthy but what the hell, we burn up everything we eat and despite consuming vast quantities of everything, we seem to lose weight, if anything.

Before we could really explore the old city we had to store our bikes and find a place for the night, so we visited some murky dungeon of an internet café where parent-hating role-players come to escape reality. After exploring options for hostels and couchsurfer listings, we called the first couch-volunteer on the list. His mother answered the phone and turned out to be one of the coolest, if not the most hip person we've met along the way. This art prof let us into her home, gave us a set of keys to get into the building, let us store our bikes in the underground garage, and had a converted artist-studio type apartment full of amazing art, furniture, books, a piano, etc. We were amazed at her youthful demeanor and brought her back a bottle of wine after our night out later on.

She recommended a great local restaurant frequented by our kind of crowd, but it was closed so we rolled up the street and had some great local beer at a little rock-indie bar called Scanner. 13 bucks a pitcher, fine by us! Afterwards we found a cheap little restaurant called Diana, full of old people so you know the deals are good. Following the food we headed directly for the old city within the walls, full of touristy shops, restaurants, and pubs, but just beautiful to look at nevertheless. We cruised around for a while taking it all in, taking pictures here and there, surfed on the ornamental cannons atop the hill, ate some crêpes, walked by the Château Frontenac, and did pretty much what all the other tourists did without spending the same kind of coin.

We marched quickly through pouring rain back to Scanner on our way back to Isabelle's apartment, had some more beer and some laughs, then headed back to the apartment to sleep. I had the pull out couch for the night, meaning that the likelihood of Rainer dreaming and flailing a wild fist at my balls was decreased significantly, fine by me. Two nights in a row wouldn't be good for anybody. In the morning we had some coffee with Isabelle and in exchange for her hospitality I did her English homework for the correspondence course she's taking. I told her to change some of the 500 word report around to make it more mistake-heavy and less like something that looks like it was written by somebody who has written more essays in four years than I would like to remember.

Leaving the city wasn't difficult at all, but the legs were a bit stiff after the day off. My now arthritic hands aren't much better either, but the day off did help. The Comfort Seat we use and resulting weight on the handle bars has lowered the circulation to my hands somewhat. Subsequently, the hands are weak and make me look half retarded when handling a knife and fork. At least the seat is great for ensuring some other things remain in good health.

The wind was pretty vicious leaving the city, but after a rough start we picked up the pace and started raising our average speed quite drastically throughout the day. I can tell now our legs are much stronger and the day off really helped.

Today we head for Montreal, well, the west island more specifically, and we'll stay with my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. My grandparents are very close nearby so it will be great to see them as well. Mike is healed up and ready to go, so he will get into town by train tonight and we'll meet up to become four strong once more! We can't wait.

Cheers!